


How to See in the Dark

by A_Firewatchers_Daughter



Category: In the Loop (2009) & The Thick of It, The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: 1960s, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Not Shippy, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:02:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28777986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Firewatchers_Daughter/pseuds/A_Firewatchers_Daughter
Summary: It started just as many afternoons started for Nicola Murray: summoned to his office to be read the riot act. This time it's different. This time, someone else is with them. And Malcolm Tucker would like her to believe that person was never there.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11





	1. The Woman

** 1967 **

It was the summer holidays.

Malcolm was already sick of it. Barely a week in and he wanted back to the school. He hated it today even more; he was left with the next door neighbour and her snotty weans while Mam and Dad worked and Jennie was away to Edinburgh with Auntie Irene.

And then there was this _bloody_ neighbour. She wrapped the weans in cotton wool, and that included him while he was there. He was hardly even allowed to go down to the toilet alone, let alone outside with his friends. Not that he had many friends, but that wasn’t the point. Bridget, her name was, and she seemed to think he would burst into flames the moment she took those green, tea saucer eyes off him. He was sure she was some relation of his Dad’s but there were so many of them (Dad was one of nine, and Nana had been the eldest of fourteen) he was damned if he knew what she was to him.

It was a three room flat, just like his, except Bridget’s was overrun with children. At least there were only him and Jennie and Mam and Dad at his. Mam was having another baby, though, so the peace wasn’t going to last long now.

“Lizzie, no!” shouted Bridget. “Put it _down_!”

Lizzie, Bridget’s three-year-old daughter, had somehow got hold of the knife Bridget had been peeling potatoes with until she had paused to feed the baby. Malcolm was surprised Lizzie had taken the notion to pick it up at all, unless she did so in protest of not being allowed to move without permission. But she was only three and she probably didn’t think that far ahead. Knowing there would be blue bloody murder if Bridget had to put that baby down, he carefully went up to Lizzie.

“Can I see it?” he asked her, feigning interest. Lizzie instantly handed it over. “Ta,” he said. He passed it up to Bridget.

Bridget, unhappy about even him, at the age of eight, touching the knife, was obviously torn between relief and worry that she had allowed something possibly catastrophic to happen. The woman was always convinced the world was about to crash in on the children, and to be around that set Malcolm’s teeth on edge.

* * *

** 2009 **

“Nicola,” said one of her colleagues as they left the Cabinet room, “Malcolm wants to see you in his office.”

“Fuck.”

That was the reaction any minister took to the news that Malcolm Tucker wanted to see them in his office. It generally meant she was about to be exposed to disproportionate displays of anger and new and fascinating ways of abusing the English language.

It wasn’t a surprise to her to hear him rage at someone when she approached the office door. Nosiness permitted her to linger there to listen. “…don’t know what the _fuck_ you are talking about!”

It was a woman who replied. “You must know where it is!”

She spoke in a deep Glaswegian accent, and with a sense of absolute urgency.

“I’ve never seen it in my fucking life!”

“Right, calm down! Shout like that and you’ll wake the dead.”

Nicola, unnerved a little by the fact he sounded like he was already in a terrible mood, knocked timidly on the door. “Come in!” shouted Malcolm.

She entered. Standing in the corner of the room was a woman in her late twenties or early thirties, in a pleated skirt and blouse, looking entirely out of place. Nicola looked at Malcolm, at the woman, and then back to Malcolm. “Not interrupting, am I?” she asked.

“No,” Malcolm said. It came out of his mouth far too quickly. “I was just…”

Nicola waited but Malcolm didn’t seem able to tell her it was _just_ anything. “I hear you want to see me,” she told him.

“Yes!” he replied. His fury rose once more. “You, ya fucking imbecile! What the fuck possessed you to tell the fucking Guardian you’ve seen the plans for the housing reforms?!”

“They asked!”

“The plans don’t fucking exist!”

“I’ve seen them, Malcolm.”

Malcolm laughed almost maniacally and turned away from her for a moment, his hand on his head in frustration. As he did, Nicola watched the woman walk across the room and leave through the open door. Fond as Malcolm was of public execution, Nicola found it odd that he hadn’t dismissed his previous victim.

“I can’t tell if you’re fucking serious or not!” Nicola frowned at him. This turned out to have been a mistake. “What is it you’ve got between those fucking ears?! Soggy cauliflower and blue mould?! That was the report into previous housing plans! You know, those things the public somehow thinks ministers have the fucking brains to learn from!”

Shit.

“What kind of fucking moron doesn’t know the difference?!” he bellowed.

“Okay, then we just issue a correction-”

“And admit there are no fucking plans?!”

“What do you suggest, Malcolm?” snapped Nicola. “The best I can do is hold my hands up and say I got the two words confused.”

“It’s like you _want_ me to behead you and stick your head on the gates of Downing Street as a warning to the next worthless sack of rotten fucking offal who takes your place!”

It was just as well Nicola had no self-esteem, she noted wryly, or else that might have been demoralising. However, she knew what Malcolm thought of her and she was beginning to come to terms with that. In the end, what did it matter anyway? He hated most people. He thought most people were beneath him, and none more so than those who let their human frailties show. There was no way of pleasing him; Nicola was almost sure that even if there was no reason to hate her, he would have invented one.

Nicola sighed. “What do you want me to do? I defer to your infinite skill in the department of gaslighting journalists.”

He glowered under his eyebrows at her. “You accuse them of shoddy journalism.”

“But they were right-”

“Who cares if they were fucking _right_ , Nicola? _Right_ doesn’t come into it. I am about to phone the journalist involved and inform them they weren’t fucking listening to you.”

“But he _was_ -”

“Get the fuck out!” he shouted.

She, aware now that her naivety may have pissed him off, raised her hands in surrender and headed to the open door. “Will I send her back in to complete her bollocking?” she asked.

Malcolm looked around at her. “Who?”

“The woman?” Nicola said. Did the mad bastard have Alzheimer’s now? “The one you were arguing with when I got here?”

Maybe his entire body turned to stone in that moment, for he lost the ability to move. Nicola looked through the open door, expecting the woman to be waiting there for her to leave, but the hallway was empty but for a few civil servants and the Health Secretary. She turned back to Malcolm. “There was no woman,” he said. Suddenly he seemed less like the brutal giant she was accustomed to; something about what she said had clearly spooked him. “Do I need to call the lads with the fucking straightjackets for you now?”

Nicola, irked by the insinuation she had imagined a whole woman, stepped forwards. “There was definitely a woman here. She left when you started your impeccable performance. Ginger hair, freckles, about the same height as me.” She frowned slightly and then said, “I didn’t imagine her, Malcolm.”

He sat down and put the phone to his ear, hitting the number keys almost violently.

She knew better than to think he was going to tell her a single fucking thing.

* * *

** 1967 **

Why did she do that? Why did she watch him like he might drop down dead in front of her?

“Mam,” said Malcolm as they washed the dishes together, “why is Bridget…” he began, but he didn’t really know how best to describe it. She was scared, aye, but it was worse than scared.

His mother, Isobel, looked down at him and – as she usually did – seemed to understand what he was trying to get at. She gave him a spoon to dry, rubbing gently for a moment on the small bump where he knew the baby was growing. “Bridget used to have more weans,” she explained.

“What happened to them?”

“They died in their sleep. Two of them, when they were only a couple months old.”

“Why did they die?”

“It just _happens_ ,” said Isobel. “I don’t think anybody’s really worked out the reason.”

“It’s sad.” Not often did Malcolm find himself touched by a mental image, but a tiny baby without any life in it brought a lump to his throat.

“It is,” she agreed. “But now Bridget is frightened, I suppose. Careful. She doesn’t want any more weans to die.”

He took a side plate from her and started to dry it, all the while thinking about how Bridget watched him all day. “She watches me.”

“You’re her great-nephew,” said Isobel. “She loves you so she’s scared for you too.”

“How can she be my great-auntie? She’s only…how old is she?”

“She’s twenty-eight.”

“Right!” Malcolm said indignantly while he tried to do the maths in his head. “And Daddy is thirty-two. So how can she be my great-auntie? Don’t you mean just auntie?”

“She was the surprise baby. Nana Jennie’s youngest sister. Your Nana was the oldest, Bridget is the youngest. She was born when your Dad was four years old, and your Nana was twenty-five, so your Dad is older than his auntie. It happens sometimes, especially in big families like Dad’s.”

He pushed the dry side plate onto the table. He knew Grandad died in a work accident when Dad was only nine. “When did Nana die?”

“Before you were born. Eleven years ago.”

“So when _our_ Jennie was…two?”

“Aye.”

“And Bridget was…”

“Seventeen.”

“Is that why she lives next to us? So you and Dad can help her?”

Isobel smiled and gave him a knife. “Aye. She’s got Mikey, but he’s…”

“Nae use,” supplied Malcolm. His interactions with Bridget’s husband told him he worked, slept, ate and drank and not much else. Not like Dad. He knew as soon as Dad came in that door tonight, he would get a wash and he would make dinner, because Mam was having a baby and Dad didn’t want her on her feet too much. He hated that Mam worked but she always said they needed the money. Malcolm glanced around him at their small home. She was probably right.

* * *

** 2009 **

Nicola sat in her office and stared into the glass wall. She had seen that woman. She was certain of it. Either Malcolm hadn’t seen her and Nicola needed to get her head tested or, for whatever reason known only to him, Malcolm had lied about her presence.

How could he had failed to see her, though? She was right _there_. He had been talking to her. Unless that had been a phone conversation she had interrupted.

But he had been shaken. She hadn’t imagined that, either. Whatever it was about the woman, it had disturbed him, but only when Nicola had spoken of her. Was she a relative? A lover? Was he afraid Nicola would out them to the press or, worse, to the PM?

Like she had imagined him into being, she saw him stride through the building towards her glass door. What had she done wrong now? She must have done something – the bollocking face was firmly on. And then he crossed the threshold into her office, the door swinging shut behind him, and the strangest thing happened: he didn’t shout. The man was lost for what to say. Did he want her to do anything? Or rip her limb from limb for a relatively minor mistake?

No. No, this was about the woman. Nicola could tell from the way his face was set in such a firm line. “Whoever she was,” she said shakily, quite terrified he would pounce over there and strangle her for speaking, “I won’t tell anyone she was there. I promise. She’s your business.”

“Fuck sake,” he grumbled. “Couldn’t you have said that in the fucking first place?!”

“Cat’s released the tongue, then.”

He didn’t have a leg to stand on and, if Nicola was honest with herself, to have the upper hand was quite satisfying. Though he was relieved, it was clear he was not yet settled. Nicola had no impulse to soothe him; after all, he took such great delight in upsetting other people. Perhaps it was time for him to feel the other side of that weapon.

Malcolm left. He left her with more questions than answers, but he left nonetheless. The people on the other side of the glass wall looked as bewildered by him as she felt.


	2. Are We Mad?

** 2009 **

Nicola didn’t see the woman again for a while. Malcolm returned to his usual certifiable self when he was sure Nicola meant it when she said she would not tell of what she had seen.

So when the time came, Nicola was entirely unprepared. Not only was she unprepared to see that woman again, but there was no way she could have anticipated what followed.

It had happened in a meeting with a BBC journalist. She had been sitting there, false smile plastered on while Malcolm treated her like a ticking time bomb, and Terrie, Glenn and Ollie engaged in what could only be described as a contest of who could be most embarrassing. She had spoken very little; these things generally went better the less she talked, she had learned.

The door to the room had been left ajar, and the woman, wearing a swing skirt and cardigan this time, slipped in and sat down at the table. Malcolm had stared at her. “Have you found it?” asked the woman.

Malcolm did not answer. Nobody else in the room answered, or even acknowledged she spoke. They didn’t even look at her. Why wasn’t Malcolm saying anything to her? She had asked him a direct question and Malcolm was not the type to refuse to speak – he would usually rather tell her to fuck off than ignore her.

“Who’s got it?” she said, this time with more earnest in her face.

He turned deliberately away from her, leaving her to look at his shoulder and the side of his head. Nicola could barely believe it. Apart from anything else, there was a journalist in the room. Even Malcolm knew better than to show a woman his back in front of a journalist.

“Would ye tell him, hen?!” the woman shouted impatiently. “Tell him I need him!”

Nicola startled. The woman’s grey-green eyes were fixed directly on her; there was no mistaking who she spoke to. Something stopped Nicola from answering, and not just that she didn’t know what the fuck the woman was talking about. The journalist, Glenn, Terri and Ollie didn’t so much as stumble in their conversation when the woman shouted. Hadn’t they heard her?

As Nicola opened her mouth to speak, Malcolm gave a subtle but intentional shake of his head. She promptly closed it again.

However, when Malcolm thought nobody would catch him, he turned and gazed into this young woman’s eyes. He looked at her like he was drinking her in. Like this was someone he knew. Someone he loved. How was this happening? How was it nobody had noticed this woman, dressed like this, sit down in the middle of a meeting with the fucking BBC?

And in the shard of a single moment, a tiny and unknowable smile flitted across Malcolm’s lips. Gone as soon as it had appeared.

He was not scared of this woman. He knew her. What bothered him was that Nicola acknowledged her existence.

* * *

** 1967 **

Malcolm had found a book when he was looking for baby Alice’s cardigan; Lizzie or one of the boys – Daniel, Frank or Matthew – must have stuffed in the old wooden trunk and, as always, nobody thought to look further than the end of their own unobservant nose.

Frank, the eldest, was only a month younger than Malcolm, and he did next to nothing to help his mother. Even when Bridget was pregnant with Alice, Frank would not so much as fold his own clothes. But then Mikey was not the same kind of father that Malcolm had in Thomas. He and Frank lived by different examples. However, surely there came a point where any boy would look at his mother struggling and, if not try and help, at least try and behave himself. Given the way Frank was currently in the corner of the flat threatening to bury Lizzie's favourite doll in the coal scuttle, it was very bloody unlikely to happen.

If he thought Bridget would let him, Malcolm would have offered his help. It had all made sense after speaking to Mam and now he knew she wasn’t just stupid, Malcolm was inclined towards a bit of kindness.

But she wouldn’t allow it. He didn’t need to ask to find out.

This book was old. It was odd in itself to find a book in this room. Bridget didn’t have time to read and Mikey wasn’t one for reading at all.

He looked up from the book in his hands to find that Bridget was staring at him. Oh, no. She was about to rage at him, wasn’t she? She beckoned him over. He bent down and picked up Alice’s cardigan and then obeyed, though reluctantly so. Bridget got the baby into her cardigan and looked at Malcolm. “This is a dictionary,” said Bridget, tapping the book’s covered. “It belonged tae yer Nana Jennie.”

“So this has got all our words in it?” asked Malcolm, carefully opening up the book. It was so ordered and clear.

“It’s quite old, so we might’ve made a few words up since it was printed, but aye, near all the words are in there.”

Malcolm turned the pages with such care, terrified of damaging them in any way. All the things he could know and understand. All the things he could learn to say and write. He had seen one of these in school but had never had the chance to actually sit and look through it. He glanced up at Bridget who, for the first time Malcolm could remember in ages, wore a soft smile on her face.

“Keep it,” she said to him.

“I couldn’t,” Malcolm said. “Nana gave it to you.”

Bridget laughed. “I spent my years with it. Read it from front tae back. And it doesn’t look like that lot,” she said, nodding over at her sons torturing their younger sister, “have much interest. Just promise me ye can look after it.”

“I will,” he replied quickly. “Thank you.”

She stroked his head for a moment and then said, “Can ye please go and rescue that doll before Lizzie starts screamin’?”

Malcolm grinned, ready to dive into the chaos.

* * *

** 2009 **

“Who is she?” asked Nicola.

They were walking down the stairs towards the building’s exit, Ollie, Terri and Glenn in front of him. “Don’t you remember what happened the last time you opened your fucking mouth in a news building, you demented scarecrow?”

“Fuck off,” Nicola half-laughed. “This is nothing to do with politics. This is about _you_.”

He turned on her, and suddenly her back was against the wall while the others rounded the corner to the next flight of stairs. “Are you fucking slow?” he growled at her, his face inches from hers. Not often was Nicola actually frightened of Malcolm – more likely she was intimidated or infuriated – but in this moment he terrified her. “You want to discuss a woman nobody else could fucking see in the middle of a building crawling with fucking journalists?”

“What do you mean, nobody else could see her?”

Nicola stared at him, remembering how nobody else acknowledged the woman as she entered the room.

“Are we mad?” she whispered to him.

“Definitely.”

“But she _was_ there.”

“I know.”

“You’re going to have to explain this to me.”

“Fuck sake!” shouted Malcolm, slamming his hand against the wall, alarmingly close to the side of Nicola’s head. With that, he pulled back and started walking again, Nicola running after him to the car waiting for them. Ollie, Terri and Glenn were already sitting in the back. The silence was tense. Angry. Before Malcolm could shut the door, someone approached.

A woman – that same woman – climbed in and sat in the spare seat next to Terri. She didn’t even look up from her fucking phone. As far as she was concerned, the seat was empty. Except it wasn’t.

Malcolm closed the door over and put his seat belt on, and mirrored Terri: stared down at his phone. Nicola, however, could not take her eyes off that woman. Neither of them spoke. Nicola wanted to ask her what she wanted, what would make her leave them alone, but if nobody else could see her, Nicola would look like a lunatic.

“Oh, she’s staring into space,” Ollie said. Nicola only vaguely heard him, and noted his hand waving up and down between her and this woman. “She’s finally cracked up. Malcolm’s actually managed to break a fucking minister,” he added, this time with a gleeful laugh.

“No, but I’ll break _you_ in half and disembowel you with a fucking teaspoon if you don’t shut the fuck up!” retorted Malcolm.

An elbow jabbed her in the ribs. She turned around and saw that Malcolm was giving her a look that asked plainly, “What the _fuck_ are you doing staring at her?”

When they pulled up at DoSAC, Terri, Glenn and Ollie got out and headed inside.

The woman stepped out silently and wandered away, walking up the street without a look back at them.

Nicola stayed where she was. “This is your stop,” Malcolm said dismissively. “Off you fuck.”

“She spoke to me, Malcolm. _Me_. I have a right to know what’s going on.”

“There’s nothing fucking _going on_ ,” he answered her. His tone was derisive, like he was mocking her for seeing something which wasn’t there. But it was there. She was there. A whole person had been speaking to them and he didn’t even want to tell her who it was. “Go on, get out. I’m sure you’ve got a fucking bin fire to start.”

“What does she want?” asked Nicola. “When she asked who’s got it. What did she mean?”

“Nicola. Fuck off.”

“No.”

He raised his eyebrows, surprised, as if he had never heard the word said to him before. But behind the surprise was anger. What could he actually do to her, though? Get her sacked? If he did, it would just mean she was free of him. Hit her? He couldn’t do that anywhere around here because it was too public.

“Come with me,” he eventually said.

He tore off his seat belt and stalked down the road, towards Downing Street. Nicola struggled to keep up with him. “What the hell is it, Malcolm? Why can’t you just tell me?”

He turned on her again. She instinctively stepped back, not wishing to be backed into another wall. “You wouldn’t fucking believe me if I just _told_ you! Even you’re not quite that fucking deranged!” His back on her once more, he walked away.

So she followed. Against her better judgement. Mind, everything she did when it came to this fucking place was against her better judgement. She shouldn’t have taken the job in the first place. It would definitely have spared her this madness.

They ended up in his office. “Shut the door,” he said harshly. Nicola did as she was told, and Malcolm reached up and pulled a book out from the shelves. It was old. Very old. When she came to stand next to him she saw it was a dictionary, but an edition from 1924. He opened it somewhere in the middle and took out a photograph, and handed it to Nicola wordlessly.

She took it.

This photograph was of the same woman. Younger than she was now, smiling broadly with a light which reached her eyes and came from her heart. Nicola turned it over and scrawled in black ink on the back was:

_Bridget, aged 16  
19th February 1955_

“This is her,” said Nicola slowly. “But it _can’t_ be her. She’s only, what, thirty?”

“Twenty-nine. That was taken on her sixteenth birthday. Her husband gave it to me when she died.”

“Died?!” yelped Nicola. “But we’ve seen her! Today!”

Malcolm turned to face Nicola. “Quiet the fuck down!” he snarled at her. “The last thing we need is some poke-nose cunt hearing that!”

“What do you mean when you say she’s dead?” Nicola asked, this time keeping her voice low. He had to mean it metaphorically, surely? No fucking way was she seeing dead people.

But when Malcolm gave a bitter noise that was almost a laugh, resigned to her confusion, she knew he was not fucking about here. He took the photo back, looked down at it for a moment, and then held it up for her to see, between his thumb and finger.

“Bridget died in 1968.”


End file.
